Ukraine: Breadbasket Or Basket Case?

Leonid Kravchuk has been on a roll. Since his election nine months ago, the 58-year-old President of newly independent Ukraine has jetted about meeting such world leaders as George Bush and Jacques Delors. He has faced down Boris Yeltsin for Ukraine's share of the former Soviet Navy's Black Sea fleet. And he has set about making Ukraine, a richly endowed country the size of France and the breadbasket of the former Soviet Union, a separate economic and political entity that can function without Moscow's historic diktat.

But now, Kravchuk's party seems to be about over. The Ukrainian economy is collapsing around him, and suddenly the political flak is flying. Faced with a choice between economic shock therapy and more gradual reform, the onetime ideology chief of the Ukrainian Communist Party is going the cautious route.